14 November 2011

21st century imperialism

Briefly back in the Highlands, and a beautiful dawn run along the loch-side.
Less beautifully, the leading story in this morning’s Independent is a shocking report of big Western pharmaceutical companies ( AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Merck) carrying out their drug tests on people in countries such as China, Thailand, Indonesia and, particularly, India, where safety regulations and ethical restrictions are much less onerous than in the West, and the profit margins therefore much greater. In India alone, since 2005, over 150,000 people have been involved in some 1,600 clinical trials, often without those people understanding what they have signed up for. Exploitative, neo-colonial, capitalism doesn’t  get much more blatant & shameless than this.

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